The present invention concerns the field of network management, and more particularly concerns using suppressible RFID tags to determine the status of network connected devices.
Network management applications often determine the status of remote devices such as computers attached to a network by querying the devices through the network. When the network fails and the application is unable to reach a device, however, this method provides no way to differentiate between failure of the monitored device and failure of the network.
One way around this shortcoming is to provide a second and separate network such as a wireless network that is used to carry status information about monitored devices. This is, of course, quite expensive. Another technique sometimes used is to sense the draw of electrical power by the monitored devices. This may be accomplished by placing so-called taps on the monitored devices' power supplies. If a monitored device fails to respond to status queries over the network, but the power supply remains healthy, it may be loosely inferred that the monitored device is working properly but the network has failed. The power tap technique is unable, however, to provide status information about a monitored device beyond the health of its power supply. This limitation may very well lead to an incorrect diagnosis of the problem at hand when a monitored device fails to respond to queries from the network management application via the network.